Team Health Pays $1.6 Billion for Hospitalists

The $1.6 billion acquisition of IPC Healthcare (NASDAQ: IPCM) by Team Health Holdings (NYSE: TMH), announced last week, was just the latest—and, yes, the biggest—in a stream of transactions targeting physician medical groups. The deal vaults Team Health to a leading position in the increasingly strategic post-acute setting, and effectively positions the company to capitalize on CMS’ migration to value-based, bundled payments, with the combined companies set to manage some $2 billion in Medicare spending. The risk, of course, is that the company will depend on government payors for more than half of their patients, and self-pay patients for another 15% of reimbursement. And with hospital inpatient volumes declining, keeping hospital contracts and retaining physicians may get harder.